The Places

St Petersburg, the former Russian capital, established in 1712 by Peter the Great, represented an era of modernisation. Built around the River Neva, which flows into the seas of the Gulf of Finland, its palaces, streets and parks, reflect the age of its construction and wider European influences to which the Tsar sought to direct his country.

The Music

The composers whose music is here included, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui, Liadov and Ippolitov-Ivanov, were themselves closely associated with Russian music of the later nineteenth century and, inevitably, with St Petersburg and its Conservatory.